In Out of the Ashes a modern matriarch takes over from her dead grandmother, determined to maintain the family loyalty and simple values she fears that the younger generation has lost.
Still coming to terms with widowhood, Marianne, a successful author, has to balance the demands of her career against the age-old tradition impelling her to hold the family together, a task beset by contemporary influences her immigrant grandmother could not have envisaged.
There is the tragedy that befalls her actor nephew, the havoc wreaked by a disturbed child, the seemingly insoluble problem eroding her son's marriage, and the far-reaching consequences of one of the family's marrying a German girl. Marianne's own life takes an unexpected turn when she meets a man whose love threatens her family involvement and her independence.
Out of the Ashes, with its rich cast of characters, is a moving family saga of the eighties in which the shadow of neo-Nazism lives side by side with the human drama that has earned Maisie Mosco a worldwide readership of all ages.